Memory conflict?

[Disastorpasztor]

I've been having basically no problems with my athlon 1.2gig machine for about 3 months now. I've been running it with only 1 stick of 256meg DDR, and i decided it was time to double that...
The ram was nothing fancy, just a generic, unbuffered, 2.5cas DDR, so i bought another generic one, with these identical specs.
i got it today, popped it in, and everything ran fine. the system and win2k recognized it correctly, and there was even a noticeable performance gain in some applications...
but then, all of a sudden, my system just restarted...no blue screen no nothing, it just simply restarted...
this has now happened 3 times in the last 12 hours, leading me to believe there is something wrong...i haven't yet tried to run the system with the new ram taken out, but it is something that i will definitely try tomorrow morning...
does anyone have any other ideas, what might be causing this? or why the 2 sticks of ram could be incompatible? i wasn't aware of any inter-brand conflicts in memory...
thanks for your help.

other relevant specs:
Asus A7M266
Athlon 1.2 266
TT Volcano II
Enlight 350W power supply
Geforce 2 Ultra
sound card, network card, modem, cd-rw, hard drive

 

[Matisaro]

Take out your origional stick of ram, and place the new stick in its place, run it for a while, if the reboots continue put your origional stick back and run it, if the reboots go away, it is a bad stick of ram.

If after placing the new stick in alone, it is most likely ram timing incompatabilities, try running the sticks in reverse position and turn the timing down a bit.



~Matisaro~
"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
~Tbird1.3@1.5~

 

[girish]

there is a known issue with using more than one DDR stick on both A7M266 and A7A266.

The A7M266 issue is addressed in their <A HREF="http://www.asus.com.tw/products/techref/tech-report/qa-mb0721.html" target="_new">techref section</A> as follows:

It says:
Question:
When I use two DDR memory modules on A7M266, the
system will freeze in Windows. If I take out one of
the DDR module, the system will become normal. How
should I fix the problem?

Answer:
This problem only occurs on certain DDR memory
modules. To work around the problem, please set jumper
VIO as [3-4] and upgrade BIOS version to 1004. A7M266
BIOS ver.1004 is available from the following URL.

<A HREF="http://www.asus.com.tw/products/motherboard/bios_socka.html#a7m266" target="_new">http://www.asus.com.tw/products/motherboard/bios_socka.html#a7m266</A>

hope this helps.

girish


<font color=red>No system is fool-proof. Fools are Ingenious!</font color=red>

 

[FatBurger]

Is jumper VIO the voltage setting?

<font color=orange>Quarter</font color=orange> <font color=blue>Pounder</font color=blue> <font color=orange>Inside</font color=orange>

 

[Matisaro]

LoL, good advice.

Asus: there is a known issue with running 2 or more ddr dimms at the same time, so we need you to update your bios to make you think that is the fix when in reality we want you to up the voltage to your ram. lol.

~Matisaro~
"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
~Tbird1.3@1.5~

 

[girish]

VIO is the voltage setting for I/O, external functioning of the CPU. these CPUs still use dual voltages, 1.4~1.9 int and 2.5V ext. DDR RAM may operate from 2.5V~2.9V.

With the above VIO setting on the A7M266, they set the DDR voltage from 2.8V to 2.5V, as <A HREF="http://www.lostcircuits.com/motherboard/asus_a7m266/4.shtml" target="_new">lostcircuit</A> says.

girish

<font color=red>No system is fool-proof. Fools are Ingenious!</font color=red>

 

[FatBurger]

Yeup, I thought it was the famous factory preset jumper that you have to change to put it in the right place.

<font color=orange>Quarter</font color=orange> <font color=blue>Pounder</font color=blue> <font color=orange>Inside</font color=orange>

 

[Disastorpasztor]

thanks for all your advice...
i flashed the bios to 1004A, and set the jumpers to what they were supposed to be at.
it's funny that you should mention the wrong factory preset jumper...i didn't know about this, and as i was making sure the jumpers were where they supposed to be, it turned out that the VIO1 (the one, i wasn't supposed to change), was not in the default position that was outlined in the manual...it was set wrong at the factory! so i changed that to the default, along with changing the VIO jumper to the setting they recommended with dual DDR sticks...
everything seems to be working now, so thanks for your help.

 

[FatBurger]

Yeup, that has been the case on all A7A266 and A7M266 boards. I wonder if anyone's bothered to tell Asus about that yet

<font color=orange>Quarter</font color=orange> <font color=blue>Pounder</font color=blue> <font color=orange>Inside</font color=orange>

 

[Disastorpasztor]

alas, it seems that i spoke too quickly...
although with the changes, the random restarts of the computer have gone away i'm still experiencing the occasional freeze, especially in 3d games...for example, in nhl2002, almost every single time it either crashes back to the desktop or just freezes...
the computer seems to work fine in all other instances and it seems to work with either one of the DDR sticks in alone...so i don't know...could it be a conflict between memory and the graphics card?
i have tried resetting the paging file again, setting it to 0, restarting, then setting it to 786MB. I'm now running the demo loop of nhl2002 to see if it crashes back to the desktop at all.

 

[Guest]

you may also try taking the memory OFF SPD in the bios. I have had your problem on a few machines after adding Crucial sticks to old machines with crap memory. Apparently the SPD screws things up. Setting the memory MANUALLY usually fixes it. Try 3-2-2 or slower. I know it's painful, but it's worth it if it solves your problem.
Download DirectX 8 and the latest nvidia drivers (or whatever). Are you overclocked at all?

guess we just need some more data. Machine data. Also as stated by matisaro get the 2nd module in by itself and run for a while first. If it works fine, it is the timing. Which can probably be solved by MANUAL settings in bios and disabling SPD.

Could also be a weak PSU. But doubtful if all you added was memory. Well, maybe I shouldn't say that with todays crap PSU's anything can happen.

Good luck,

Shibumi

 

[Disastorpasztor]

i tried the manual settings in the bios, the problem still occured...tried running the new stick of ram all by itself, and it still wasn't working out right...
i'm now back to running with just the original ram and all the symptoms have gone away...
does this mean i got bad ram or is it just incompatible...maybe a combination of both...
i'm hoping it's not the power supply that's causing all this...afterall it's a 350W and it hasn't had any troubles yet.
detailed system specs:
the power supply is an Enlight 350W that came with the Enlight 7237 case
non-overclocked athlon 1.2 266
ELSA geforce 2 ultra, latest drivers
SB Live, latest drivers
lan card, modem
Yamaha 16/10/40 cd-rw
Hitachi 8x DVD
Fireball AS 40gig hard drive
western digital 30gig drive

all this is probably the max i can run on a 350W, and it was working fine before, with just 1 stick of ram...voltages all normal (+11.916, +4.999, +3.28)...and the problems did not go away when i ran the system with just the new stick of ram. so i don't know...

 

[Guest]

make sure that when you put memory in a pc it has the same speck if it is 400 then all should be 400 also check what type of memory your computer supports that is very important check the modle of the mb an check it online also ddr is a memory that only supports win xp the best thing you can do is get a MB that supports DDR2 it is better than ddr that's the best i can do also remove the new memory and that problem will go away ok My name id David I hope i whas any help OK

 

[shadowthor]

I think the problem has probably been solved by now. Its been about 9 years.